


Until the Second Song

by clearbluewater



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:22:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clearbluewater/pseuds/clearbluewater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Legolas didn’t know how he knew. He didn’t know how he could feel the life slowly flowing out of Gimli, like a flawed cup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until the Second Song

**Author's Note:**

> Twas the night before finals  
> And I'm crying over this instead of the fact that I haven't studied at all
> 
> This one is also you-comfort-me's fault. All the sad hiatus pictures. ;.;
> 
> It turns out I can't write sad scenes either! Which begs the question, what exactly do I think I can write?

            Legolas didn’t know how he knew. He didn’t know how he could feel the life slowly flowing out of Gimli, like a flawed cup. Legolas looked into his own goblet. The wine tasted no better than ash on his tongue. The goblet was one that Gimli had made after they had reached Valinor. Dwarves always had to exercise their craft to remain happy, much like elves needed to be under the stars. Dwarves cared not for astronomy. The fires of their forges under the mountains were light enough for them. Gimli had made a cup with no flaws, no place where the wine was leaking into Legolas’s palm. Why, then, had the great Äule made dwarves with a flaw, some place where their life force slowly ebbed away, mortals that they were?

            “You are pensive,” Gimli said.

            Legolas gave him a watery smile. “I am.”

            They continued their meal.

 

~~~

 

            They were on a promontory looking out to the sea. The moon was full tonight, and outdid the stars in beauty. Had the pounding of the surf, the cries of the gulls, ever stirred his blood? Now they only soothed him. Legolas looked over to Gimli and smiled. Gimli must think it soothing also, because he was half asleep beside Legolas.  Legolas put his arm around Gimli and brought him closer to his body. That movement awakened Gimli, and he looked up at Legolas. He got that look in his eyes that usually preceded exclamations of how beautiful Legolas was, but Legolas silenced him with a kiss. It was chaste, and they broke away soon. Gimli nestled more comfortably into Legolas’s arms.

            They were silent, but what had they to say? Legolas’s heart pounded in time with the surf, and Gimli’s heart matched his.

 

~~~

 

            Gimli was asleep. Old people slept a lot, Legolas had learned. Legolas had laid beside his love for a while, but restlessness prompted him to get up and flutter about the room. He wasn’t properly pacing, but something like it. Something to ease the built up tension. Gimli’s snores faltered and Legolas’s head snapped towards him, the bowl that he had picked up in his restless wanderings still in his hands. But Gimli merely rolled over, taking advantage of all the space he had now that Legolas had vacated the bed.

            Legolas put the bowl down and sighed. It would be an hour or two before Gimli woke up.

Suddenly, he was seized with the need to cling to Gimli and never let him go. Legolas sat down on the bed and draped his arms around the sleeping Gimli. Legolas’s heart clenched in the most painful way and a tear landed on Gimli’s side before Legolas even realize he was crying. He removed one arm from Gimli, though he was loath to do so, to dry his tears.

            Legolas laid down and held Gimli properly, spooning up against him and burying his face in Gimli’s hair.

 

~~~

 

            Gimli was fading faster every day, and Legolas’s heart was breaking.

            His mind was not as muddled as Bilbo’s had been before he passed, but there was the same absent quality to Gimli now as there had been to Bilbo. It was a constant fight to stem his tears now. At least he still knew who Legolas was. At the end, Bilbo had forgotten entirely who Frodo was and Frodo had the burden of explaining who he was every time he went to visit his uncle.

            Legolas didn’t know what he would do if Gimli’s mind was ever so far gone that he couldn’t remember who Legolas was. That would be the decisive blow in Legolas’s war against tears.

            Legolas thought that he had felt grief before. He thought that with Elessar’s passing, he had felt the sharpest pains that the arrows of grief could give him. Yet he knew that he was lying to himself. For then he had Gimli to hold him, and to share in his grief. Who would do that now?

 

~~~

            Legolas had been curious when, shortly after their arrival in the Undying Lands, Gimli starting taking trips around the countryside looking for a particular sort of rock. He had taken Legolas on many similar jaunts before. Gimli would tell Legolas about the rocks and Legolas would tell Gimli about the trees and they would be content. Yet before, Gimli would always tell Legolas what the stone was to be used for. Now, he answered Legolas’s questions with silence or dismissals and it pained more than Legolas’s curiosity. He used all the tricks he had learned in their long association, the barbed flirtations and needling comments hiding his desperation, until Gimli finally broke.

            “It is for my tomb,” he said.

            Legolas said no more.

            Yet Gimli continued, as if to punish Legolas for making him break his silence. “I’ll have to make it myself, since none of the elves here would know what to do. And even if they did I still wouldn’t trust them with it. It is a dwarf’s work.”

 

~~~

 

            When Gimli had finally found stone that pleased him, he started on the sarcophagus. He carved a great many dwarvish runes which Legolas could not read on the lid, but he carved stories in sculpture onto the four sides. On the side that would be at Gimli’s feet, he carved an image of them as the Three Hunters, dashing off into the plains of Rohan. Legolas smiled as he ran his hand across the image of himself. It was very lifelike. Gimli had made him pose for hours to get it just right.

             Gimli threw himself into his project. Legolas had always loved watching Gimli work, and his love was not lessened by the morbid nature of his current project. The look of calm concentration on Gimli’s face, the way his hands skillfully used the tools…

            On the right side of his sarcophagus Gimli sculpted the moment he became the Lockbearer. Lady Galadriel even consented to pose for it. Gimli was deeply honored.

            Usually it was Legolas’s own figure that Gimli sculpted first, but for this one it was the Lady. Legolas did not begrudge her for it, though. It had taken quite a bit of coaxing to get Gimli to finally ask Lady Galadriel to pose for him. Gimli said that he didn’t want to bother her, it was tedious work being a model. But Legolas knew the depths of his heart and knew that Gimli wanted it, so Legolas helped to make it happen.

            “I have forgotten his face,” Gimli admitted softly.

            “Hm? Whose face?”

            “Boromir’s.”

            Legolas closed his eyes and walked through the memory that Gimli was immortalizing in stone.

            “I remember,” Legolas said. “Here, I will draw it for you.”

            It took some procuring to get the art supplies. Legolas was not much in the habit of drawing; it had been one of the lessons foisted upon him as a prince and he had managed to become competent, but no more.

            It did not bother Legolas that Gimli watched him as he drew. He had watched Gimli often enough at his work, a quiet observer when it was needed and an interested student when Gimli wanted it. It was interesting to have their occupations so reversed, but Legolas found that he did not mind.

            When the picture of Boromir was done and handed off to Gimli, Legolas felt himself inspired to draw the rest of the Fellowship as they had been.

            The two of them worked into the night, the sound of a chisel on stone mixing with the sound of charcoal on parchment.

 

~~~

 

            The portraits weren’t very good, but they soothed Legolas. He found himself inclined to frame them not out of any artistic value, but for nostalgia’s sake. Legolas and Gimli were the last of the Fellowship still living. Gimli would be gone all too soon, leaving Legolas alone. Alone, in an empty house that Gimli had built with his own hands, with nothing but pictures on the wall to remind him of what he had lost. He quickly replaced the portrait of Gimli on the mantel so the charcoal wouldn’t be smudged by his tears.

            There was a clomp of dwarvish boots, a sound that Legolas had grown to love. He quickly wiped his eyes and turned to Gimli. The contrast between the portrait and the real thing was jarring.

            “You made frames,” Legolas said with a smile when he saw what Gimli was holding.

            “Aye,” Gimli said. He set the wooden frames and the glass to cover them down on the table and Legolas brought the pictures over.

            “I’ll put them in the frames. You chose where to put them,” Gimli said.

            “Be careful of the charcoal,” Legolas warned. “It smudges.”

            It was a simple thing to decide where to place the portraits of Gimli and himself. They would go on the mantel. The pictures of Merry and Pippin would be hung on the wall near their dining table, while the portrait of Sam would be at home in the kitchen. The pictures of Elessar and Frodo found their place in the study, and once Gimli was finished with it, the portrait of Boromir would go in the foyer.

            Legolas hung the pictures since he was the only one tall enough to reach the spots he wanted. He smiled in satisfaction and slipped his hand into Gimli’s.

            “Thank you for making the frames,” he said.

            “T’was nothing,” Gimli said, waving it off.

            Legolas’s response was to hug Gimli from behind, leaning over until their faces met. Gimli brushed Legolas’s hair out of the way as they rubbed noses.

 

~~~

 

            For the left panel of his sarcophagus, Gimli etched himself as Lord of the Glittering Caves. It should be impossible to represent the dramatic splendor of the caves in plain stone, but somehow Legolas could see the sparkles of the gems embedded into the walls of the cave, the beauty that Gimli had coaxed from the stone the way Legolas would coax beauty from a flower. Legolas marveled that no one else seemed to understand that dwarves and elves were not so different in this respect, only in the medium for their beauty. In his long association with Gimli, he had learned much of the nature of dwarves. More than any elf before him, Legolas fancied. Much was made obvious to him, and he found he could no longer understand nor sanction the ignorance that his people had of the dwarves.

 

~~~

 

            _Thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more_ , indeed. Even though Mirkwood was much healed, on its way to becoming Greenwood the Great once more, Legolas was not happy here as he should be. Luckily, he found the paths much as he remembered them, but even if he hadn’t, his father had sent people to fetch him.

            He absorbed his guides in talk of their home before they could ask Legolas about his. They spoke of happy events such as the extinction of the spiders and the return of normal flora and fauna to the darker parts. Dol Guldur was nothing but a ruin now, void of all power to poison the forest.

            The time passed by talk of such events was quick, and soon Legolas was at his father’s throne, bowing and greeting him. His father had not changed. Legolas found that reassuring, that Thranduil was an unchanging rock of an elf that the tide of a new age could not shake. Legolas smiled to himself and thought that his father would not appreciate such a comparison.

            “What amuses you so, my son?” his father asked at supper.

            “I find it refreshing that there is at least one thing in the world not changed,” Legolas said.

            “Which would be?”  
            “Yourself, of course. I had not realized how tired I was of people treating me like a hero until you treat me like an errant child.”

            “You are a hero and an errant child both,” Thranduil said, taking a sip of his wine.

            Legolas smiled at his father.

            “How do your friends fare?” his father asked.

            “Elessar has fully rebuilt Gondor and his people are happy. I assume that the hobbits are happy as well in the Shire, but I have not heard from them for quite some time. Gimli is still working on Aglarond.” Legolas looked at the walls of this cave, and it was impossible to compare. “It is very beautiful. The walls of the Glittering Caves are more gem than stone, now.”

            “Surely that has brought your dwarf riches beyond compare,” Thranduil said. His tone was neutral, but Legolas knew what his father meant.

            “Gold holds no sway over Gimli, nor greed,” he said, his tone a warning.

            “Perhaps not now. But greed is a fault in the essential nature of dwarves. He is a child of Erebor and I fear that Aglarond will share in its fate someday.”

            “They do not even mine the gems! Do we cut down groves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood? The dwarves tend to the stone like we to our plants.”

            “Be at peace, Legolas,” his father said, holding up a placating hand. “My intent was not to offend, but to caution.”

            “You know nothing of dwarves, Ada.” Legolas tried to calm himself, but the words came out hot. Thranduil looked for a moment that perhaps he might argue with his son, but let it go gracefully.

 

~~~

 

            Gimli carved himself and Legolas sailing on their ship to the West on the side where his head would lay.

           

~~~

 

            The time had come, and they both knew it. Legolas did not bother to try and dam the flow of his tears as he held Gimli’s hand. Gimli’s grip was feeble, his strength fading. He used his other hand to brush away Legolas’s tears, his touch as light and gentle as the breeze.

            “Legolas, I love you dearly.”

            Legolas could not speak through his constricted throat, but they both heard the unspoken _I know. I love you too._

            “Never has a dwarf had a greater, or stranger friend.”

            “Never has an elf had a greater, or stranger love,” Legolas said with a smile through his tears.

            Gimli gave Legolas a fond smile and a soft kiss. Gimli’s tenderness broke Legolas even more. He could hardly see through his tears, and he desperately wiped them away to clear his vision of his friend and lover’s last moments.

            “Farewell, Legolas Greenleaf! The time will pass in agony until the second song. Wait for me, my love.”

            “I will! I will! Goodbye!” And he spoke Gimli’s secret name, the name that Gimli had gifted the knowledge of to Legolas alone. Legolas sobbed as he felt Gimli’s breath and heart stop. He gave free rein to his tears, throwing himself upon Gimli.

 

~~~

 

            Legolas did not know how long he wallowed in first fresh pangs of his grief. He was left with a hollow, light feeling when the tears would not come anymore, as if the water of his tears was ballast keeping him grounded.

 

~~~

 

            Legolas thought that Gimli would have liked his funeral. _Except he couldn’t like anything, because he was dead and couldn’t see his funeral_ , some brutal part of his mind whispered. That brought a fresh surge of tears. Nobody denied him his grief, but nobody truly understood it, either. Few mortals had come to the Undying Lands, bringing their mortality with them and succumbing to it.

            Legolas looked up at the elves all around him, filled with a sudden hate. What did _they_ know of loving a mortal?

            All Legolas wanted to do was to be alone, if he could not be with Gimli. He wanted to throw all of these elves out. What did they know of Gimli, of their love?

            Lady Galadriel passed by to offer her condolences. Legolas did not want to deal with this right now, but he would do it for Gimli. Gimli would be touched by the Lady’s words. Yet she did not say anything to Legolas, just gave him an understanding smile and held both of his hands. Legolas was grateful for her silence.

He ran away as soon as he could, but he was not sure where to run to. He could not return to his cavernously empty house with only the pictures on the walls for company.

            He wandered in the forest. Now that he had satisfied his sea longing, trees were a comfort, though a cold one, to him once more. He sat down at the foot of an elm and let the solitude consume him.

 

~~~

 

            Legolas had planted a garden around Gimli’s tomb. This was the first year that everything was in bloom. Gimli had never minded changing his space to suit his elven lover, and Legolas thought that it was fitting that they should share even though the veil of death separated them.

            “Hello, my love. Our garden is in bloom. It’s very lovely.” Legolas sat down on the stone bench that he had erected by Gimli’s tomb. It had previously lived in the garden at their house, but it was better served here.

            “I’m not any better, you know,” Legolas addressed the sarcophagus. He could hardly get the words out from his constricted throat. “Time does heal, but it is far too slow a healer. Sometime I feel like I may die of my wound because time has not healed it fast enough. I will wait for you, though! Dying does me no good,” Legolas said, his mouth twisting bitterly. “I am denied that last comfort of death, for to spend my death separated from you is even worse than spending my life separated from you.”

            Legolas stood up in anger. “Why is the afterlife segregated so?” he yelled. “Why I am I not allowed to join you in death? Why must I wait for you until the end of eternity?” Legolas screamed his fury to the skies.

            Legolas slumped down to the ground, resting his back against the tomb of his one true love. “Death is no comfort. Only more waiting. Else I would throw myself into this cursed sea that infected my blood! For too much of our time together I felt the sea calling. It threw a shadow over our love. I had too little time with you for it to be tainted so!” Legolas’s fists pounded the ground.

            Legolas’s anger faded as swiftly as it came. Legolas clutched at it desperately, trying to hold on to some emotion to stop the encroaching emptiness he could feel coming in the wake of his anger.

 

~~~

 

            He was on that same promontory that he had often liked to visit when Gimli was alive. Only there was no Gimli beside him. Legolas held his hand out beside him in an expectant fashion. It had pained him, the first time he had done it without recalling that Gimli could not take his hand, but Legolas now found that imagination served just as well. The years that they had spent hand in hand were etched into his brain and it was a small matter to create the illusion of a warm, rough hand in Legolas’s own.

 

~~~

 

            “Hello,” Legolas addressed the picture of Boromir in the foyer as Legolas took off his boots. “I’m home,” he said to the portraits of himself and Gimli on the mantelplace. “And I am hungry!” he said to Sam as he went into the kitchen.

            “I do not know if my cooking has improved or my hunger has sharpened the taste,” he commented to Merry and Pippin on the wall as he ate.

            Legolas went to the study and settled down in his chair. Gimli’s desk and chair was covered in a layer of dust an inch thick. “I don’t really have anything to say to you two,” he told Elessar and Frodo. “But I like to talk to you anyways.” He gave the pictures on the wall a sad smile.

 

~~~

 

            “I think I’ve accepted it now,” Legolas said, skimming his fingers over the runes carved into the lid of the sarcophagus. He wished he had asked Gimli what they said. To do it while he had been alive and carving it seemed to make Gimli’s death more real, so he had never asked. But now that his life was over, he wished he would have asked what it meant.

            “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore. It’s an old wound. Waiting is still hard, though. Life is meaningless without you by my side. What I am to fill my ages of waiting with? I wish we could have had a child. I need something other than stone to remember you by. I cleaned your desk yesterday. I…just felt that it was time. I cleaned the rest of the house, and I was just thinking of the memories we made there. And weren’t even there together for very long. I miss you,” he said, pressing his cheek to the stone. “So, so much,” he said after a shaky breath. “But I will wait. I will wait until the second song.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this one is a little rough, so any suggestions for improvement are welcome. This isn't like my usual style, so I'm a bit worried about the quality.


End file.
